2 ms·

This is an interesting article, but offers little concrete data. That grazing cows compete with other animals seems pretty obvious, okay, but to me the question

This is an interesting article, but offers little concrete data. That grazing cows compete with other animals seems pretty obvious, okay, but to me the questions are: Is grass fed beef better or worse than traditional beef for the climate? Is it better or worse than chicken? Better or worse than soy? Is using "marginal" lands and competing with local wildlife better or worse (for the climate? for the ecosystem as a whole?) than getting the same calories by other means, e.g. more intensive agriculture on non-marginal lands?

CraigJPerry 5y ago
I know nothing but in the UK we have a chap with a YouTube channel called Harry's Farm and he regularly makes the claim that grass fed beef is at least carbon neutral and may be even better than that. He claims to have dug into some research on co2 sequestering in grass. I have no idea if true or not, I watch him mostly for his other channel, Harry's Garage, (he's a motoring journalist, with a great car collection)
- rob74 5y ago
  I'm a little bit skeptical of this claim, because cows turn the "sequestered" carbon (partly) into methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
  - EverywhereTrip 5y ago
    A cow eating grass isn't eating sequestered carbon. It's part of the carbon cycle. It is a living organism eating a living plant. If a ruminant doesn't graze a grassland, it needs to burn...which releases carbon. If neither one of those things happen, the grassland will die and decompose. Grasslands and ruminants co-evolved. Sequestered carbon would be underground. If there were no fossil fuels dug out of the ground and burned, there are no amount of cows that could cause a problem with warming. ALL ruminant animals produce methane. Deer, moose, elk, antelope all do. It is part of fermentation. A cow eating grass is more carbon neutral than other things people try to pass off like biodiesel.
  - EdwardDiego 5y ago
    True, although research is ongoing into minimising this[1] and a product based on the above research is being prepared for the market. [1]: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0247820 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

CraigJPerry 5y ago

I know nothing but in the UK we have a chap with a YouTube channel called Harry's Farm and he regularly makes the claim that grass fed beef is at least carbon neutral and may be even better than that. He claims to have dug into some research on co2 sequestering in grass. I have no idea if true or not, I watch him mostly for his other channel, Harry's Garage, (he's a motoring journalist, with a great car collection)

rob74 5y ago
I'm a little bit skeptical of this claim, because cows turn the "sequestered" carbon (partly) into methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
- EverywhereTrip 5y ago
  A cow eating grass isn't eating sequestered carbon. It's part of the carbon cycle. It is a living organism eating a living plant. If a ruminant doesn't graze a grassland, it needs to burn...which releases carbon. If neither one of those things happen, the grassland will die and decompose. Grasslands and ruminants co-evolved. Sequestered carbon would be underground. If there were no fossil fuels dug out of the ground and burned, there are no amount of cows that could cause a problem with warming. ALL ruminant animals produce methane. Deer, moose, elk, antelope all do. It is part of fermentation. A cow eating grass is more carbon neutral than other things people try to pass off like biodiesel.
- EdwardDiego 5y ago
  True, although research is ongoing into minimising this[1] and a product based on the above research is being prepared for the market. [1]: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0247820 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...